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With the exception of Harry Styles, individual artistic journeys of ex-participants of TV talent show-manufactured bands rarely capture the audience's attention. They usually follow predictable patterns – either an attempt at a more edgy urban music style, replete with at least one single featuring a cameo by an US hip-hop artist, or a move into mature mainstream-approved smooth pop-rock territory – and they usually amount to a barely recalled interim project, the visual and auditory experience of someone gamely killing time prior to the unavoidable reunion tour.

An Idiosyncratic Path

It’s a state of affairs that renders the unconventional route thus far followed by former Little Mix member Jade Thirlwall surprisingly refreshing. She’s certainly not above doing the kind of things that former talent show band members are wont to do, including emphatically stating that she’s no longer subject the press-managed restrictions of the factory-produced music business – based on tonight’s crowd, the most popular item on the merchandise stall is a fan displaying the phrase “TINA SAYS YOU’RE A CUNT”, a lyric from the track Gossip, her collaboration with dance duo the group Confidence Man – but regardless, the songs she has chosen to create is pop music with a far more fascinating style than usual.

A Superb Debut

She launched her individual career with last year’s superb her debut single Angel Of My Dreams, a deeply odd, jarring and disjointed melange of big pop balladry, loud electronic instruments and audio excerpts from the classic track Puppet On A String by Sandie Shaw.

As the set on her initial individual concert series proves, not every song on her debut album her album That’s Showbiz, Baby! is equally fascinating as that: the track Before You Break My Heart is extremely memorable, but it’s also typical dancefloor-oriented pop, driven by precisely the Motown musical snippet the name implies; things are padded out with a cover of Madonna’s Frozen that devolves into a musical compilation of 90s dance hits, from 808’s Pacific State to N-Trance’s Set You Free.

Additional Fascinating Content

But there’s also more material in the vein of Angel Of My Dreams. The song Headache melds an Abba-esque chorus with song sections that offer a borderline atonal brand of funk or are surrounded with deep reverberation. She offers Unconditional to her mother: it has a fabulous melody, eighties-style electronic percussion, and powerful guitar riffs combined with metallic pounding beats. The song IT Girl surprisingly resurrects the musical aesthetic of early 00s electroclash, or more accurately the exciting variation of millennium-era popular music that was heavily influenced by electroclash, while the track Natural at Disaster begins like a piano ballad before unexpectedly swerving into a dark computerized noise.

A Charming Performer

The woman at its centre is a immensely likable, cheerily unvarnished presence: she declares, she states at one point, “trembling uncontrollably”; shouting out her queer audience members, who are present in large numbers, she proposes showing appreciation by adding a official undergarment to the merchandise booth.

Future Possibilities

It could conclude the way such individual artistic pursuits end – the hostility towards ex-group member her previous colleague Jesy Nelson expressed in the song Natural at Disaster resolved, a media announcement to declare that the original group are reunited – but the fact that the entire audience appear knowing every lyric as they join in vocally to a record that was released just a month ago makes you wonder. And even if it does, the closing Angel Of My Dreams underlines that Thirlwall’s solo career is not destined to fade into the realms of the barely recalled interim project.

• Jade performs at the O2 Victoria Warehouse in the city of Manchester tonight and is traveling across the United Kingdom until 23 October.